On January 19, 2009, we announced a voluntary recall of 14 U.S and 4 Canadian products including CLIF Bar, CLIF Builder’s, CLIF MOJO, CLIF Kid Organic ZBaR and LUNA Bar, in the U.S. and Canada because the peanut butter in those products was sourced, for a limited period of time, from the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). PCA is a manufacturer and supplier of peanut butter for many food companies and manufacturers.

...

If you purchased the recalled bars, please destroy them but retain the BEST BY, SELL BY or EXPIRY DATE/DATE D’EXPIRATION code found on the back of the package. For questions or a refund, contact us online or call 1-800-CLIFBAR (1-800-254-3227).

As I read it, ClifBar announces a voluntary recall. This is being done by telling us to destroy the purchased product. If we want, we can try to call them for a refund? I don't want to call. Their online form link is a generic request for information about a product. Make it easy for me, ClifBar, to get $$ or replacement, salmonella-free product.

Despite the title, this post isn’t really about 37signals, in particular. I’ve used them as an example, only. I probably could have called it the “Joel on Software” effect, too. This post is about all of us who aren’t 37signals, or Joel, and the dangers we face when trying to incorporate lessons they’ve learned into our worlds.

...

37signals is extremely popular because of how freely they give out lessons learned and other assorted advice about software design and the business of software. Each bit of advice has been extrapolated from their experiences. There’s interesting things to be learned from one company’s approach to their situation, but generalizing this to all business is so very dangerous.

It's the same story for McAllen, Texas, Syracuse, N.Y., Pittsburgh, Buffalo, N.Y., and El Paso, Texas. They top the list of the country's strongest real estate markets, in part because, like Little Rock, "none ... participated in the housing boom," says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com.

Yet the semisweet spot that Pittsburgh finds itself in was never inevitable. As recently as 2000, it had a higher unemployment rate than Detroit or Cleveland. Just as Michigan has traditionally put all its chips on the auto industry, it took Pittsburgh a long time to come to terms with the end of the steel era.

“The emphasis was on fighting the presumed causes of the decline by getting rid of low-cost foreign imports or providing more subsidies,” said Harold D. Miller, president of Future Strategies, a consultancy. “The assumption was that steel will come back and we’ll go back to the way we were.”

Ariane Sherine: We did it! The atheist bus campaign is bigger and better then ever | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Topic: Miscellaneous

5:20 pm EST, Jan 6, 2009

Given this unexpected amount, I'm very excited to tell you that 800 buses – instead of the 30 we were initially aiming for – are now rolling out across the UK with the slogan, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life", in locations all over England, Scotland and Wales

To do this, Apple engineers custom-designed lithium-polymer cells to create the largest possible battery, then they went even further: They built the battery right into the computer, eliminating the space-consuming mechanisms and housings that standard removable batteries require. The result is a battery that’s 40 percent bigger than the previous generation and offers up to 8 hours of wireless productivity on a single charge.

Hurray! First the iPod, then the iPhone... now in laptops too! Now, when your battery wears out, you can just get a new computer.

(Yes, I actually do own more than one battery (only $5!) for my blackberry, and replace batteries for laptops to give them new life).

The Obama stimulus package should be spent on transformative investments, not bridges and roads. - By Eliot Spitzer - Slate Magazine

Here is where the New Deal analogies are instructive. The New Deal probably didn't pull us out of the Depression; World War II did that. What the New Deal did was redefine the social contract—perhaps just as important an outcome. The ultimate significance of the Obama package may be not its short-term demand-side impact but rather its capacity to transform our economy and, in turn, some of the fundamental underpinnings of our society. This introduces the second major problem: The "off the shelf" infrastructure projects that can be funded immediately and provide immediate demand-side stimulus are almost by definition not the transformative investments we really need. Paving roads, repairing bridges that need refurbishing, and accelerating existing projects are all good and necessary, but not transformative. These projects by and large are building or patching the same economy with the same flaws that got us where we are. Our concern should be that as we look for the next great infrastructure project to transform our economy, we might rebuild the Erie Canal and find ourselves a century behind technologically.

How do we adapt the resume to the modern economy? I've made a "first attempt" to get discussion going, but I'm interested in feedback and new ideas. I expect the best solutions to be anticlimactic: simple designs that attract as little attention as possible.